Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) often lamented the slow demise of the 'funnies' in newspapers. Where once they were a guaranteed couple of pages of irreverance, now they are marginalised and almost considered an after-thought. As someone who often made his first stop the cartoon pages of a newspaper I couldn't help agree, with certain favourites requiring an immediate visit. Those favourites tended to be the strips which struck a nerve, or were on a subject of which I had personal experience.

And so it was that the Mutts of Patrick McDonnell's pen had me laughing at the traits of cats and dogs, or Aaron McGruder's Huey and Riley queueing for the opening of Star Wars Episode 1 in Boondocks brought back terrible memories...

While I had these strips reflecting my own thoughts and observations there was one major gap for one of the biggest activities in my life - there just wasn't a cartoon strip about cycling.

At least there wasn't. Until Yehuda Moon (created by Rick Smith) pedalled into view.

Yehuda Moon, together with his own personal 'Yang' Joe, runs the Kickstand Cyclery in Shaker Heights, Cleveland, Ohio, a fictional, but altogether real, bike store. Rick admits "Yehuda's basically me," which essentially means that Rick is a fan of steel bikes, and of utility cycling, who looks forward to the day when everyone sees the light and joins him riding. Joe is based on a colleague, and is the recreational cyclist, often seeing passing Yehuda on his way to the store in the mornings, but the two set out to cater for any type of cyclist imaginable.

The devil is in the detail, and Rick even has a specifc range of bikes that Kickstand stocks: "A small group of reclusive, resurgent Shakers builds the frames for the shop in the country. The shop sells a city bike (the Van Sweringen), a randonneuse (the Coventry), and a line of road and racing bikes called the Rapid"